Valves have a variety of applications in numerous industries. In the production of oil, natural gas, and other fluids and gases, valves are a necessity in any operation due to the need for directing the flow of fluids (gas, water, and oil) between wells, pumps, vessels, and refineries. In general, oil and gas development includes well drilling, production (bringing fluids to the surface), treating the various mixtures of oil and gas, and the transportation to oil refineries and gas sales points. Many production fields consist of numerous wells producing fluids comprising natural gas, oil and water individually, simultaneously, or collectively. Generally, the fluids from the wells are transported to a central collection or gathering station to combine or further separate them for subsequent aspects of development, such as refining, gas sales, etc. Additionally, testing from specific flow sources is often required to ensure the quality of the fluids produced. Accordingly, the production of each well is generally directed to a manifold system that communicates the well products to various testing and/or production destinations upon production. Additionally, the numerous destinations for materials require the use of a myriad of valves and pipe systems to direct flow to a desired location.
Using multi-port valves is well known. However, most multi-port valves are designed to have multiple inlets and a single outlet. Additionally, most multi-port systems direct the flow from an opening through a chamber with selectively opened and closed outlets for fluid. The use of these multi-port valves allows multiple inputs to be directed to a single destination. Though appropriate for some applications, the multi-outlet valves operate only to direct fluid to a single destination, absent additional piping and valve systems.
In addition to gathering production fluids from wells, often different types of fluids or other matter is required to be sent down into the well. For example, treating solutions to dissolve terrestrial rock formations and scale compounds must be directed down-hole to facilitate production. Additionally, pipe scrapers, commonly known as pipeline “pigs” may be required to be propelled through the piping systems to the wells by pressurized fluid flow to remove scale and debris that can limit production rates. Each pipeline pig requires a launcher and a receiver. In prior art, the piping configuration necessary to support pigging operations is normally extensive. A need exists for a more compact multi-flow system in offshore, environmentally sensitive or industrial plant settings where space is a premium.
Prior art manifold systems can be extremely cumbersome, especially with respect to the piping architecture required for manifolds accepting large numbers of production lines from wells or other sources. Additionally, the configuration of most prior art manifold systems requires complex piping arrangements that require large amounts of space relative to the number of producing sources. For testing purposes, conventional manifolds require additional isolation valves for each production line to be tested, thus increasing capital cost, weight, space and maintenance cost.